French Curriculum

The world is becoming a smaller place.  The study of languages liberates children from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures.  At Highwood Copse, we have therefore implemented the teaching of French for all children from FS2 to the end of KS2, thereby supporting:

• Oracy and Literacy: Children spend much of their time in language lessons speaking, listening and interacting – more than in most other subjects.  They take part in role-plays, conversations and question and answer work, sing songs and recite, perform to an audience and respond to a wide range of aural stimuli.  This emphasis on communication, including language learning's important role in the 'education of the ear', underpins children's capabilities in oracy, which is critical to effective communication as well as a key foundation for literacy.
• Reading and Writing Skills: As children are introduced to new sounds and phoneme-graphemes correspondences, they are encouraged to reinvest their reading skills, including sounding out individual sounds and blending them into syllable and words. As they progress in their learning, children are then exposed to more complex language, which allows them to strengthen their understanding of grammar and syntax.
• A deeper understanding of their own language and culture, as well as of other languages and cultures: Although it enjoys much more linguistic diversity than in the past, England remains a place where the motivation to learn another language is affected by the position of English as a widely spoken, world language.  This makes it even more important that we give all children the chance to learn another language in order to gain insights into not only their own language/s and culture, but into those of others around the world.

Language learning therefore not only complements the children’s overall education, but also their open-mindedness and understanding of the world.

french subject overview 2023 1 .pdf